What we drink and how we live: Michael Braverman uncorks the Hamptons.

08/27/2011

The Hurricane of 1938 on Long Island

Her remaining clothes in shreds, the nearly naked countess, terror-stricken and pale as ashes, desperately clutching her infant daughter and followed by her maidservants, struggled to reach the front door of a house in Westhampton after her own residence was ravaged by the storm.

No, this is not a line from a chick-lit or romance novel. It is based on an account in the New York Times of September 23rd, 1938. Here is how the Times described it: “A Countess who fled in overalls with her small baby clasped to her breast and a retinue of servants splashing at her heels gave thanks tonight that Providence had seen fit to spare her from last night's hurricane…. It was a disheveled white-faced woman [Countess Charles Ferry de Fontnouvelle, wife of the French Consul General in New York] who came out of the storm still clinging to her twenty-three month old daughter, Anne Renee. She had discarded her overalls because they impeded her flight and was wearing only her underclothing…”

We might smile at the Gothic visual of the disheveled countess and her domestic staff fleeing into the night, but it was a deadly serious, life-threatening situation. The hurricane of 1938—hurricanes were not yet given names—was a lethal, stealthy, unanticipated disaster for the Hamptons.

More than 50 people perished on Long Island. Westhampton bore the direct, destructive brunt of the storm and suffered the most damage with 29 deaths and more than 150 homes destroyed. Even in the village center, a mile inland, the storm surge reached over six feet.

In Southampton, only two cottages remained on Dune Road, and St. Andrew’s Church of the Dunes was shattered. In Bridgehampton, nearly 50 barns were lost and potato fields were washed away or buried beneath tons of sand. More than 80 Montauk fishing boats were destroyed or seriously damaged, and 150 fishermen were left homeless. Oyster and clam beds were totally wiped out. The pre-Revolutionary elms and locusts that formed a canopy over East Hampton’s Main Street were in ruins. The Shinnecock Inlet, now a permanent geographical feature, was created by the storm. This is only a small part of the list: the amount of damage was truly staggering.

Could such a disaster happen again? The answer is an unequivocal yes. And the timing could be as soon as the next decade or two. The return period for a category 3 hurricane is eighty years, according to the experts. We have had five “epic hurricanes” in our colonial and post-colonial history, between 1635 and 1938. Forecasting methods are immensely better now than they were in 1938, but the coastal population and widespread development since then are even more immense, so the danger is greater.

I remember Hurricane Gloria in September 1985. The National Hurricane Center first called it the “Storm of the Century” but later classified it as a less spectacular category 2. After the worst of the storm I went to Georgica Beach, where the waves were breaking on the parking lot. Trees all over town were down, some crashing onto houses or blocking roads. Outlying areas were without power for as long as eleven days. But this is nothing compared to the predicted effects of a more major storm. LIPA estimates that a direct hit from a category 3 hurricane would cause 750,000 to 1,000,000 power outages on Long Island, with 15 to 30 days required to restore service. A rare category 4 storm would inundate JFK Airport with twenty feet of water and flood the Holland and Brooklyn-Battery tunnels.

This is awfully scary stuff. If we are threatened with a strong hurricane in the future, take the warnings seriously. Do what the authorities advise, including evacuating. Next time around, some people won’t be as lucky as our countess.